Texas Border Sheriff’s Investigator Sentenced for Hunting While on Patrol

Starr County Sheriff's Office1 Apr 2015

A Texas border county sherriff’s investigator was sentenced in a Starr County court to probation and home arrest. The charges grew out of a wild night of driving down the highway and shooting at animals from a patrol car. The stunt cost the investigator his job, a one-year probation term and 30-days of house arrest.

Texas Game Wardens arrested Javier Pena, a 10-year-veteran with the Starr County Sheriff’s office, in 2011 after catching him, another man and two women in his police car shooting at deer from the highway about 10 miles north of Rio Grande City, court records obtained by Breitbart Texas revealed.

Texas Parks and Wildlife game wardens were able to find Pena because his police spotlight gave their location away, court records revealed.

Late last year Pena was found guilty of three counts of poaching, which is a misdemeanor offense in county court, and he was just recently sentenced to 180 days in jail by Judge Romero Molina. Judge Molina later changed the sentence to 12 months probation and 30 days of house arrest. Pena is also facing felony charges related to the same case for which he has not yet gone to trial.

As previously reported by Breitbart Texas, Starr county law enforcement officials have a history of corruption and illicit activity:

Last November, a Star County Sheriff’s Deputy was arrested by U.S. Border Patrol while moving a drug load.

In 2013, Romeo Javier “RJ” Ramirez, a Sheriff’s captain who was in charge of the jail division, pleaded guilty to bribery charges for having taken money from the Gulf Cartel in exchange for law enforcement sensitive information.

In 2012, Nazario Solis, also a sheriff’s deputy, was arrested for getting assault weapons and protecting drug loads for a Gulf Cartel boss in Mexico. In addition to his employment by the Gulf Cartel, Solis had also been charged with taking bribes for tipping off underground casinos about police raids.

In 2008, former Starr County Sheriff Reymundo “Rey” Guerra went to federal prison for giving free passage through his county to members of the Gulf Cartel.